Emily Kendal Frey

The Pain of Living

I just read a disheartening article about people ghosting their therapists

I caught the sunrise but nothing changed about my life

Insert flower image

I slept enough but woke inflamed

You’re angry, my therapist says, and that’s okay

I hold back tears for no real reason

Memory of my dad swimming in a mountain lake, memory of my dad

How will I make it through I say to my partner

The sheets feel gritty

When anyone does or doesn’t remember my life, I cry

I filled my office with incense smoke, went around sweeping up dead ants

You’ll think what you think about me, and yourself,

Most of it just this side of wrong

Our hearts big boats trying to turn around

I might still have

a good life, even though the raspberries never revealed themselves

on my walks, all summer the grass was brown, I don’t remember

it being green—one minute it was spring

and I was annoyed with the pinks and flutterings—too fast!—and the next

the air and me

scorched, dead, dead like my dad is dead only

visible, and everywhere,

the brown grass taunted me, I could not see anything

but the present and how it contained a past

I was not aware of, and yet

today I know

there’s a cloud floating above my house with moisture in it, I mean

somewhere there’s water giving

a baby a bath,

a baby with ears, a baby with eyes, and there’s enough

water and time to cover

all of them, there’s so much,

so I might still

have a good life, there might be chance of it,

yet.